[davexunit]

Lax licenses, and even the regular GPL, do not legally entitle users of a web application to the corresponding source code. The AGPL does with its copyleft-over-network "Affero" clause. If you don't think copyleft is important, or think that it's OK to permit proprietary derivative works, then the AGPL will seem like a poor license choice. I am extremely pro-copyleft, especially for applications (vs. libraries), and think the AGPL is great and fits a very important legal use-case.

[striking]

What if the license were just an entitlement to your personal data? That you could take it back and share it only according to your terms rather than those of the server operators?

I think the AGPL works very well for applications that employ it. I simply think that perhaps this one shouldn't. Instead of threatening to legally bludgeon non-free versions, it should just work better or have more value than a non-free version.

[davexunit]

>Instead of threatening to legally bludgeon non-free versions

That's a real sneaky way to describe copyright infringement.

[JesperRavn]

I agree. While I'm not very pro copy-left in general, I think for a social network it makes more sense. If there are concerns about privacy, and the solution is open source, then why leave the door open to a proprietary version that would completely defeat the purpose of this software? It's especially ridiculous to refer to enforcing the AGPL as "legally bludgeoning" someone, since the proprietary code derived from this would presumably like to "legally bludgeon" anyone who distributed or modified their source code.

[simoncion]

Not infrequently, one's data is less than useful without the software that manipulates it.